EU Bookshop, December 2004

Though the new EU Bookshop online was technically launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004 it is still under development and is not yet being widely promoted. Most of the basic aspects are however functioning and it already offers access to some three and a half thousand titles so it is worth exploring. It has the ambitious aim of being both an online bookshop, where it will be possible to purchase a print publication or download an electronic version of the text, and an archive and catalogue of all EU publications. From October 2002 printers are required to supply the Publications Office with a PDF file of all publications produced. These form the downloadable texts available through the site. To offer the same access for earlier titles would require the huge undertaking of wholesale scanning of print, so more realistically this is likely to develop as a scan on demand service but even that is some way off at this stage.

The site is live at http://www.bookshop.eu.int. On the home page the centre part of the screen offers selected titles that the Publications Office wants to promote, under the heading “Publisher's choice”. On the right of the screen under “Just published” is a list of the latest additions to the site. This information should be generated automatically but at the time of writing there was a slight hitch which meant the information had to be added manually with knock-on effects elsewhere on the site. However this should be fixed shortly. The site interface is only available in English at present but the other official languages will follow. Whichever language interface you choose to search, you will still be able to select as now from the dropdown list of language versions of the text that you wish to purchase or download - to buy for example of copy of the French text.

There are two approaches to the main content of the site: searching and browsing. The search function allows you to search by words in the title, abstract or contents. Note however that this is not a full text search and also you will only be searching the current content of the site, not the archive. Titles are archived after approximately one year though this is not a hard and fast rule, and clearly the whole content is as yet very recent. With an annual publication for example it would be expected that an earlier edition would be moved to the archive when the new publication appears, though there are examples on the site where this has not happened. The truncation symbol is the asterisk, and there are various limit options such as language or free publications only. Results are displayed five to a page, though this setting can be changed if you register and create your personal profile. At that point you can also set up your default language and other language preferences.

The hits list shows which publications are free or priced and from there you can either download the electronic text or order a printed copy by clicking on the appropriate icon. When you have filled your shopping basket and are ready to place the order, you will be asked to select a sales agent. Though you place your order online through the Bookshop site, you will in fact be dealing with the national sales agent of your choice who will add VAT and handling fees as appropriate. The complications of cross-border handling of different VAT rates and currencies was felt to be too difficult to go for centralised supply. Privileged users such as official relays will be able to order single copies of free publications through the site, just like ordinary users, and it is planned that in future they will also be able to place bulk orders. In the meantime however, now that the warehousing system locally in the UK for example has ceased, orders for multiple copies will need to be passed through the EC Representation. Members of the public can of course be directed to the site to request their personal copies.

To search by ISBN or catalogue number use the “Search using identifiers” option. In order to broaden your search to include material in the archive you will need to use the Advanced search option and remember to check the archive box. This allows you to search by word and specify title only searching if you wish. You can enter a search term such as “asylum” in the search box and select a theme, e.g. Justice and home affairs, to find only publications on that theme containing your chosen search term. If you want however to find all publications on a theme, you will be reminded that you have mistakenly left the word box blank. You can get round this by putting an asterisk in the box and the system will now search happily for all publications. Various limit options are available including publication format and date. One option which looks potentially interesting is the “Target audience” field but this is not yet live.

The browse feature offers five approaches. The “Just published” and “Key publications” reflect the content of the “Just published” and “Publisher's Choice” sections of the home page. The “Browse by theme” page offers a list of fourteen subject headings - which do not seem to match exactly either the Directorates General or existing catalogue headings, or even the Directory of Legislation in Force chapter headings. Each heading can be opened to display sub-themes. Note however that where numbers are given of publications under each sub-heading this will probably not come to the same total as shown next to the main theme heading. This is because some publications will have been allocated only to the broadest heading, while others will be defined more precisely under one of the sub-headings. Browsing by author shows the range of institutions, agencies and other bodies whose publications are included on the site and the variations in numbers of titles listed to date. Browsing by thesaurus has been included for professional users. Again Eurovoc headings will open out to display more detailed lower level terms.

It is important to remember that the Bookshop maintains the distinction between publications and documents (e.g., COM docs, EP reports etc) that the old printed catalogues from the Office for Official Publications used to use. The Bookshop will only be dealing with “publications”. Just as at present too, there remains the problem of the paper publications which are distributed not through the Publications Office but directly by the DG or other body. Again these are not included on the site. Perhaps however we might hope that this new online access route will encourage better bibliographic control in the future.

We are currently in the evaluation phase and it is planned that the site will be properly open from around March 2005. The site is rather slow at the moment but this is being investigated. Development will continue and by June 2005 we should expect to see the Librarian's corner. Among the advantages of this area that we can look forward to are more sophisticated searching possibilities, ways of saving results and creating a clippings list, and catalogue records in MARC and other formats.

While it will be possible to track the progress of a single order without registering on the site, to get a full picture of all outstanding orders you will need to register. As well as the added benefits of being able to save search results and set preferences, you will also be able to subscribe to news alerts automatically sending out details of new publications in your area of interest. Though the registration option seems to be working for internal users at the moment, it does not seem to do so for external users of the site. Altogether this is an ambitious project which has the potential to be very useful when fully up and running. As the content expands and the planned functionality becomes available, especially the catalogue records feature,- the site should expect high visitor numbers.